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A View From the Mountain: Covid-19 and the Condition of the World. (Or: The Universal *WHAT*?)   

Big hands, small world.

 

 [18-minute read]

Imagine: what if the world had a governing council, democratically elected, whose only mandate was to guide humanity towards oneness and global renewal? What if such a body were commissioned to rise above partisanship, indeed above the limited advantages of individual nation states, to consider thoughtfully the needs of all the world’s peoples? And while we’re in full-on fantasy, let’s imagine that this council’s members were chosen exclusively because of their capacity to serve, and not due to their power or fame or their desire for either. Wait, how about this? Let’s dispense with nominations, any sort of advantage for the rich (fundraising of any sort), narrowly based constituencies a candidate must favour, and the whole road-show of promises, slandered opponents and vote for me! What do you think? Which is stronger in your mind – the appeal of this flight of utopian fancy, or its impossibility?

 

Well, I have news. In truth, there’s no need for imagination. Such an institution is no mere dream. Did you know that there is a Universal House of Justice in the world? It was conceived in the writings of Baha’u’llah, the 19th-century Persian nobleman who was stripped of his social position and exiled far from his homeland, and why? For championing the renewal of religion, a new age of human prosperity, and the oneness of humankind. (If you have heard of the Baha’i Faith and its principles, Baha’u’llah is their author.) After steady growth in its numbers and capacity, the Baha’i community first elected what is now its supreme institution, the House of Justice, in 1963 in a remarkable process, completely free of campaigning or ambition. The electors, themselves chosen in a series of prayerful, conscientious procedures, privately vote every five years for those whom they feel have the best capacity to serve. This selection is based on assessments of the maturity, cooperative ability, mental strength, loyalty and selflessness of an individual. Not fame. Not good hair. Not vaulting ambition. Not wealth or privilege or lobbying or a telegenic smile. The difference between this process and the national elections we’re most familiar with – Baha’u’llah might have described them as “lamentably defective” – is as wide as your favourite ocean. Two particular qualities mark the distinctness of the Universal House of Justice from any other prominent governing body in the world. One is that most Baha’is in the world, I suspect, couldn’t even name a member of the House, such is its character and the nature of its elections. (A fame-watcher like me? I think I could name three, tops.) Second, and perhaps most important, not only are Baha’i communities everywhere in the world amazingly responsive to its requests, but they also love the institution of the House of Justice! Bizarre but true.

So now you know a little about this unparalleled system of governance, one that I’ve been mildly obsessing over and immoderately enthusing about for most of my life. Now, if you’ve never even heard of the Universal House of Justice, or barely have, don’t feel badly. This is a governing body that doesn’t send out press releases or trumpet its accomplishments, at all. Besides, with some astounding exceptions (such as the “Peace Message”, its 1985 letter to the peoples of the world), most of its communications are addressed to the Baha’i community, and in a human sea of over seven billion, Baha’is constitute only about one human in a thousand. I guess you could call this a minority report.

The seat of the Universal House of Justice, part of the Baha’i World Centre on the side of Mt. Carmel.

Dear reader, this has also been your preamble to a longer discussion of a superb talk I heard recently. The above introduction will help make sense of what follows, and explain why a group of us were so compelled to hear from a gentleman agricultural scientist we had previously known almost nothing about. (It’s a Baha’i Thing.)

*****

For the second time in a year, the Ottawa Baha’is and their like-minded friends recently benefited from the insights of a former member of this institution, Dr. Firaydoun Javaheri, on current conditions in the world. The first was in a sweltering lecture theatre at the University of Ottawa – we shook hands! hugged! listened and perspired, packed shoulder to shoulder! – and, the times being what they are, the most recent talk was on Zoom.

Originally from Iran, Dr. Javaheri trained as an agronomist, then made a pioneering move to Africa where he worked in several nations, primarily The Gambia and Zambia, finally as technical director for the Food and Agriculture organization of the United Nations. As a volunteer activist, he was in the forefront of the Baha’i community’s growing efforts in social and economic development and served on elected local and national councils – Baha’is call them “spiritual assemblies” – and subsequently as an appointed “Counsellor” for the African continent.¹ In his 50s, he was then elected to serve as a member of the Universal House of Justice, and did so for three 5-year terms, living and working on Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel, where the Baha’i World Centre is located.² He is now retired and living in southern Ontario, Canada, where he has family ties..

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Really, Kevin? Can’t Beat ‘Em?

(twelve-minute read)
One of the good guys, from what I can tell. Wearing the dark hat (and a bullseye) now: Kevin Durant.

One of the good guys, from what I can tell. Wearing the dark hat (and a bullseye) now: Kevin Durant.

Young sir, may I call you Kevin?

I’m sure They have been calling him lots worse, though I’m not looking under bridges to check. I’m guessing “traitor” and “chickenshit” and “turncoat” and “ungrateful bastard” are making the more printable lists. “Benedict Arnold” might be favoured by those who know a little American history.

So: Basketball Star Kevin Durant Signs Free-Agent Contract With Golden State Warriors. There’s your lede, not going to bury it. This being July 5th, it’s no longer news in the antic spin-dry cycle of what-have-you-hot-taken-from-me-lately entertainment/journalism. But to me it’s still novel, a bit shuddery and uncomfortable, sort of bewildering yet all-too-familiar, a cause of naive dismay and even a spur to misplaced and minor outrage. Hey, wanna come along? 

This is literally unmediated. I haven’t had the chance to filter my jangled thoughts through what must have been a torrential downpour in the Twitterverse sports teacup, a tempest in the chatrooms and sports blogs of the world. (At least in North America, this must have outdone Iceland over England by far, and may have even outstripped Trump and cute animals for an Internet spell.) I spent the very best part of yesterday hanging around in my corner of Ottawa with some of the finest young people you’d ever want to know, and many of them barely know who Kevin Durant is. The day was about selfless service. Voluntarism. Youth leadership by the young. (Hence, I wasn’t much more than a bystander, but an inspired and committed one.) Moral purpose. Community. Educational vision. Societal transformation. All that grassroots jazz. (And walking. Lots of walking.) There was no time for Twitter.

But some of the youngsters do know KD, and their phones are smarter than mine is. As we hunted for idealists in Overbrook on the fourth of July,

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Peter Khan (on idealism vs. lethargy)

“We, today, face…the test of overcoming apathy and lethargy, the test that those around us increasingly lack zeal and idealism and a passion for changing the world. Society around us has lost its vision….Heroes and heroines…have become discredited….They have been found to have feet of clay. There are no heroes. There are no heroines….It is a matter of making it through day by day, being concerned only for one’s self because no one else is interested in us. You survive or not. It is a hard, cruel world out there.

“That is not the Bahá’í way. We are people committed to the creation of a new society. We are summoned to heroism…to sacrifice…to idealism and to altruism….We are people who love and are concerned about generations yet unborn and we are prepared to dedicate our lives that those generations to come…may have a better life; may have a life of peace and unity and harmony and the possibility for the full development of their potential.

“This is the idealism to which we are summoned as Bahá’ís. We need to overcome the apathy and lethargy of society and stand apart as people dedicated to the creation of a new world.”

Peter Khan (1936-2011) was a professor of electrical engineering who became best known for his service to several sorts of Bahá’í community institutions in the U.S.A. and Australia, as well as membership on the worldwide community’s elected international council. This is an excerpt from a talk he gave in 1995 in Chicago. What a mind! His spoken delivery was very deliberate and dry, not dazzling at all unless you listened to what he was saying.

Time Goes Fast, Learning Goes Slow *

Love this album.

* This is a line from from Bruce Cockburn‘s song “When You Give It Away”,  from his 1999 album Breakfast in New Orleans, Dinner in Timbuktu. Bruce is mighty, but this post isn’t about him. It’s all about me, folks. (Well, and maybe them, and her, and all of us, and maybe even you.)

I should know by now.

(I do know, as through an angry glass, darkly.)

I should know by now that vehicles on Dalian streets do not yield for pedestrians, but may accelerate around corners or slalom from one lane of traffic to another to get past them. I should know better than to get revved up, but I still do. It happened again yesterday, though I didn’t shout and flail. (Progress!?)

I should know by now that my freshman class’s leader wouldn’t really understand my directions, though he said, “Got it!” I should have known that he would go upstairs to ask the school administrators for an empty classroom, rather than just doing the quick walkabout I’d recommended to find a spot for a writing class that we’d had to re-schedule. (I knew they wouldn’t help him, since he was a mere student, and they likely wouldn’t have had any better answer for me. Such requests are, no matter how banal, always “very difficult”.) By the time I arrived, just barely at the time we’d agreed on, some of the group had dispersed because there were “no rooms available”. Yes, well, except for the one on the first floor, the one on the second, and the one on the third. I didn’t go any higher.

I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn, later that day, that our Canada-bound sophomore students are required to pay a 6500-yuan “service/counselling fee” to get their visas. That’s about a thousand bucks. That’s about two months’ rent for our well-above-average apartment. My surge of head-shaking disgust was surely redundant. I shouldn’t have been surprised, either, that the kids seemed entirely resigned about it.

I should know better than to have let my temper rise at dinner last night, too. He was only 20-something, and yes, he had too much to say, and he talked right over the friend to his right and was sublimely uninterested in hearing from the two women at our table. Four bottles of beer in an hour didn’t help him much, come to think of it, and I do have a son-of-an-alcholic’s distaste for those who find loud courage in a bottle. It’s true, also, that most of our students and young Chinese friends assume that Canada is paradise and that our lives are far more fortunate than theirs – which, in most ways, is nothing but true.

But he got so aggressive in bemoaning how hard it was to find a wife, how little he had learned in seven years of university, his not knowing how to do his job, how difficult it was, how long it would take him to save for a house so long as he turned down his well-off daddy’s standing offer to buy him one or two (which would, according to Chinese custom, make his wife-hunt much easier, sad to say). By the time he launched into you don’t know, you’re from Canada, everything is easy for you, I should have known it was time to bid a polite good night, but this spoiled prince-ling had hit a whole bunch of a cheek-chewing Canadian’s buttons. He probably doesn’t think a lot differently than many young men I know here, but he was rude and insistent enough that he got both barrels. I don’t like to be so salty and direct, and I wish I’d been able to do it without so much heat, but enough was enough and maybe I was burnt by a long day of learning what I ought to already know. We had spoken earlier of the value of directness, and maybe he learned something, too. We parted civilly, all of us, with mutual congratulations for frank discussion and the importance of seeing for ourselves, but I was still muttering to myself as I got ready for bed. I slept long.

I knew this wouldn’t be easy. There is so much education to be had! (Trouble with nations, trouble with relations / Where you gonna go for some illumination? / Too much to carry, too much to let go / Time goes fast, learning goes slow…*) As we approach the end of four years living and teaching in China, I know who the real student is. (Imagine: I complained a little in our first year that our living conditions in China were too comfy, that we weren’t really experiencing sufficient hardship to genuinely grow, to contribute usefully to this society. I hope I’m growing. I hope I’m giving something that China can use. But I should’ve known better than to tempt the fates as brazenly as that!) I wasn’t used to thinking of myself as a slow learner1, but I should’ve known that a stubborn idealist and a fiery perfectionist (those would be me) would take some bumps.

 

1 And, if more evidence were needed, I’m headed for another adventure in old-boy basketball Sunday night, playing students again in the same gym from which I took an unscheduled hospital trip in January. Some guys never learn, and sometimes that ain’t so bad.